[PS Vita] How To Set Up SD2Vita Tutorial

A new way of storing your content has been developed in order to move away from Sony’s proprietary PS Vita memory card. You can now use a Micro SD card to store all of your homebrew and game content. Though this takes some setting up, this is the preferred way of storage. This SD2Vita tutorial will help you set one up.

The SD2Vita adapter uses your PS Vita game card slot so if you play a lot of physical Vita game cartridges it may be inconvenient for you. Personally, I think the ability to use a MicroSD card (up to 256 GB) outweighs that fact. Plus, at the end of this tutorial you’ll find information to help you install your physical Vita games onto your MicroSD card.

1. PS Vita on HENkaku Enso Custom Firmware or h-encore

2. SD2Vita adapter

Version 3.0 and 5.0 of the SD2Vita adapter are the latest and greatest versions of the adapter. Any SD2Vita adapter older than v3.0 is not recommended.

My advice: Buy either version 3.0 or version 5.0. They are known by the PS Vita hacking community to be made of higher quality materials than previous versions. Additionally, they support the spring loaded mechanism so you are able to eject the SD2Vita itself and your micro SD card without fuss.

I own both 3.0 and 5.0 versions of SD2Vita. I’ve bought two bad SD2Vita 3.0 adapters that were dead on arrival. The first SD2Vita 5.0 I purchased arrived and worked fine. To be safe, I recommend buying several adapters (2 or 3) at the same time in case one arrives broken.

I also recommend buying from eBay because you can choose a seller that ships from the US. If you use AliExpress, though cheaper, your package will take a full month to arrive from China.

5. Create a new MBR (msdos) partition table, an exFAT partition, and format that partition

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mkfs.exfat/dev/sdx

6. Copy the backup you made earlier to the SD Card

7. Put the SD Card into the SD2Vita adapter and reboot your Vita

What’s Next?

At this point your Vita should have rebooted and recognized your SD2Vita adapter. The Orange LED next to the adapter should blink, indicating it is reading files stored on your microSD card. Additionally, If you go into Vita Shell, your adapter is mapped to ux0 now.

Now you are free to install homebrew, PS Vita, PSP games, PSX games, etc. with your increased amount of storage.

How to Install Homebrew and Games on your SD2Vita adapter

I highly recommend checking out NoPayStation. As the name implies, you are able to download PS Vita, PSP, PSX games free (if you own the license) directly from Sony’s servers. Check out the official tutorial here (mirror) as well as the official site. For support and community help, check out this PS Vita Hacking Discord server.

Stay tuned: A review with my thoughts and experiences of the SD2Vita adapter will be coming up next.